A STUDY AND MEDITATION ON THE ANIMAL AND PLANT WISDOM OF THE GAIAN TAROT JUSTICE CARD – SPOTTED OWL

I’ve been working on a study of the Animal and Plant Wisdom from the 12  endangered species shown in Joanna Powell Colbert’s  Gaian Tarot Justice Card.  Eventually I plan to pull these together into a comprehensive tarot spread concerning living justly, in the mean time I have been pondering and reflecting on each plant and animal and searching for the wisdom questions they might hold for me and others.

I’m starting here with Spotted Owl.  Read, ponder, reflect, enjoy.

Photo from http://www.oregonwild.org

A STUDY AND MEDITATION ON THE ANIMAL AND PLANT WISDOM OF THE GAIAN TAROT JUSTICE CARD – SPOTTED OWL

I’ve  had some incredible experiences with owls, including the Spotted Owl.  This bird is rarely seen and few have had the fortune to come across it or even hear it.  As a kid and young adult I spent a great deal of time in the old growth forests of Oregon, where these birds live.  Though I don’t recall coming face to face with one, as I have with other owls, I do recall with striking clarity the times I have been standing amongst the majestic elders of an old growth forest and heard this owl call.

The spotted owl needs old growth to thrive.  And as most are aware, old growth trees are in high demand, bringing some of the highest dollars per tree in the forestry industry.  And so, we have the conflict that was brought to the forefront of most of the western world not too long ago.  The Spotted Owl became the target species of environmentalist trying to stop the harvest of old growth forests and in turn the Spotted Owl became the target of many an outraged forester who felt his livelihood being threatened.  Whether you side with the forester or the environmentalist, this issue is not as black and white as many would like to have it seem.  And that’s coming from an environmentalist.  An environmentalist with a family history of foresters.

The food on my mother’s table as a kid growing up in a logging town in Oregon was the result of trees being cut down, roads being built and spotted owl and other species habitats being slowly or quickly in some cases stripped away.  I remember, as my inner environmentalist was budding, having conversations with my mother about these very issues.  I learned that, though it would be nice for it to be black and white, these issues never are.  Finding balance and harmony in a world that often struggles with change of any kind is not an easy thing.

The Spotted Owl is not a quickly adaptable species, unlike the Barred Owl who has moved into and beyond the territory of the Spotted Owl.  The Barred Owl, a close relative to the Spotted Owl, seems to have the ability to live and even thrive in a wide range of habitats, including the second growth that grows up after old growth forests are replanted.  They even live and successfully raise young in the small parks and preserves in major cities.  The Spotted Owl however seems to be less versatile and is thus in more danger of extinction due to habitat loss, and where the Barred Owl has moved into these areas as well, they are in competition for resources.  Many people look at the Barred Owl in a poor light due to this, but really, I wonder if that is short-sighted.  Perhaps nature takes a longer view.  As things change on our planet species evolve, cross-breed and change over a long period of time to adjust to those environmental changes.  Only with human action, these changes are happening at a far greater rate than perhaps many of the species can handle.  Will the Spotted Owl have a change to evolve to handle the loss of its prime habitat?  Time will tell.

Personally I believe we have cut more than enough of the old growth forests and that the remaining should be left alone.  We, as a species and as a culture have ways of creating livelihoods and resources that should free us from the idea that these incredible forest habitats should be cut down for any reason.  But humans are slow to adapt as well, especially when it comes to the bottom line, livelihood, and changes in the way we live.  So will these last remaining precious habitats be saved?  Again, time will tell.  I can only hope so.  What is done is done though.  There is no going back.  No magic wand powerful enough to restore what is lost forever.  What counts is what we do now and in the future.

As humans it is easy to judge, rant, philosophize, choose sides, point fingers and so on.  But for the owls, they have to just keep going, doing what they can with what is available and leaving the future to the future.  And there in is the key to what I believe is, in part, the wisdom of Spotted Owl:  Living each day, using what is available to you, and only what you need to thrive.  Keep on keeping on and trust Mother Nature to work out the balance, she’s got eons of experience at such matters, and if we are willing to stop and listen to Her wisdom perhaps we can learn how to find balance in our own lives.

So the questions for Spotted Owl are these:

How can I learn to find balance in my life, where I take no more than I need to thrive, and concern myself with no more than what is before me in each moment, so that I can live more justly for the good of all?

How might I evolve or change to better live in this changing environment?

How can I facilitate deep listening and seeing to hear and see the wisdom of Mother Nature.

What wisdom do I need most to live justly?

You can see more picture of the Spotted Owl and hear its call at http://www.owlpages.com/owls.php?genus=Strix&species=occidentalis

Making Informed Food Choices – Baking Powder

We haven’t had baking powder in the house for over a month.  When we ran out, we agreed to do some more research, actually try to find a purer form that aligned more with our food ethics.  At PCC, the nearest natural foods store to us, there are four options for Baking Powder:  Bob’s Redmill, Rumford, Frontier and Hain.  The first three options all use cornstarch and do not have any sign of it being verifiable non-GMO, despite comments on Frontier’s site that it doesn’t contain GM ingredients.  If it’s not verifiable, it’s not good enough for us.  The Hain is the gluten free option and uses potato starch from inorganic potatoes, a possible GM food and, like corn, also produced with large amounts of chemicals when grown inorganically. We won’t eat non-organic corn or potatoes in any other form, so why buy it in this form?  Whole Foods and the Central Co-op have similar options.  Here is the first road bump to helping consumers make informed decisions on what they are purchasing.  If it’s at a natural food store it is NOT necessarily organic or non-GMO.  In fact, a large majority of the items in any of these stores are likely to be not only inorganic but also contain GM ingredients.

That led me to looking online.  I searched for non-GMO organic baking powder.  Lots of links came up with organic baking powder in the heading.  Clicking on them took me to all of the above products listed available at the local PCC  which we’ve already established as NOT organic or verifiable non-GMO.  Here is where we hit yet another road bump in helping consumers make informed and accurate decisions about what they’re purchasing:  searches online can be very misleading.  If the word organic is anywhere on a site it can show up anywhere in the search, leading people to think that the products that are listed under that link are indeed organic or non-GM.  You have to look closer, dig a little deeper –  that’s inconvenient, takes time and is not done by the majority of consumers.

The next option, if a ready made product is not available, would be to make one yourself.  This leads to looking up recipes for home-made baking powder.  It seems pretty simple and straight forward – at first.  According to most recipes you need three things:  sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), cream of tartar, and a starch – usually cornstarch is listed.  Cornstarch is available organic and is on the shelf at most natural food stores (usually sitting next to a non-organic option, which of course costs less, thus tempting the consumer to chose it instead – but that’s another post altogether.)  So what about the other two ingredients?  Sodium bicarbonate – baking soda – it’s most likely already in the cupboard of households all across the country.  It’s the alkali ingredient in the baking powder and can be used on its own to raise baked products if an acid ingredient is in the recipe.  How it is sourced and processed is more than I want to dive into in this post.  So for the moment I’ll move onto cream of tartar.

Cream of tartar is an acid and, according to the sources I have found, is a bi-product of the wine making industry.  How it is processed is still something I am researching, but in the mean time I just want to address that I have not been able to find an organic source for it.  The wine industry is another chemical heavy industry.  Pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and inorganic fertilizers all play a part in the production of non-organic wine grapes.  We don’t want to play any part in encouraging that and don’t in our everyday food choices, so why do so for this ingredient?

With all this taken into consideration, my husband and I sat down and discussed our options.  The first thing to point out is that for me personally this isn’t that big of a deal.  I hardly ever eat things that contain baking powder due mainly to the fact that  I don’t (can’t) eat sugar and most quick raised baked goods contain sugar.  So, it really came down to what my husband wanted to do.  He really prefers to keep what comes into our house as pure as possible and said that for now, he would rather just go without the baking powder and find creative ways to live without it.  We’ve already been having crepes instead of pancakes and enjoying them.  We know from past experience that we love spoon bread, a variation of cornbread that uses a lot more eggs and no chemical leavening.  I’m sure we can discover more foods to try in place of what would call for baking powder.  In the past I’ve often made quick breads for my husband to add to his lunches, since we’ve been out of the baking powder he’s just been taking more whole grain breads and nut butters for his afternoon or mid-morning snacks. Due to my intolerance to yeast, baking with it in our house is not an option but we are fortunate to have two local bakeries with plenty of options – Tall Grass Bakery and Essential Baking Company.  I suggested he look into some of their less savory breads as a replacement to the quick breads if he gets a craving.  He’s looking forward to that.  Really when it comes down to it, it’s a matter of the mind.  We can think about what we can’t have when trying to make more conscious and informed choices about what we eat and be miserable or we can look at what we can have, even make it a fun adventure and feel good about making better choices for ourselves and our world.

If anyone is interested in a little trivia about the history of baking powder and similar products here are a couple of links to get you started.

http://foodtimeline.org/foodfaq.html#bakingpowder

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/BakingPowderHistory.htm

 

Gluten-free Food for Thought

Today started off with Teff pancakes from a recipe in Bob’s Red Mill Baking Cookbook.  Teff is a very tasty gluten-free grain and the pancakes are always yummy, especially when they get cooked in coconut oil.  But my tummy didn’t seem to appreciate them, after a while I got a pretty bad stomach ache.  I’ve had them before and not had to much of a problem, but sometimes my body is more sensitive than at other times, I guess this may have been one of those sensitive days.

The thing is, it may not be the teff  that bugged me but the large quantity of baking powder that goes into them to get them to raise.  I know that my body would prefer to be completely leavening free but I don’t adhere to its wishes on that completely.  The times are getting rarer, though, when I will have something with baking powder or baking soda.  Not having gluten hardly ever (I’m really not supposed to have it at all on the anti-candida diet) leaves me with only gluten free baking options and they leave much to be desired.  Most recipes call for things I don’t consider whole foods like xanthum gum and often several cups of various starches and only a little whole gluten-free grain.  I don’t care to eat a bunch of stuff, when I can eat so little as it is, that is basically junk food.

A woman I know recently told me that she finally figured out that that gluten-free bread she was eating wasn’t good for her, and she was probably right if it was like many gluten-free breads I have seen on the market.  Gluten-free doesn’t mean healthy and nourishing.  Whole cooked gluten-free grains and seeds are certainly healthy and those teff pancakes really aren’t that bad either.

Gluten-free can be healthy, but it can also just be another form of junk food and empty calories.  For those who really care about their health it would be a good idea to be certain which version they’re consuming on a regular basis.  So often when I pick up gluten-free products and look at the ingredients list I see a lot of sugars and fillers.  That’s sad.  Especially for people with serious health conditions that require them to be gluten-free.  Conditions that are often related to the intestines and can make absorption of nutrients very difficult, meaning what ever they are eating should be as packed with nutrients as possible.

Gluten-free is a big business these days and as with any business there will be those that are out there just to make a buck, not necessarily producing things with our best health interests in mind.   That’s up to each of us to decide if what we are putting into our bodies is really what our bodies need for us to thrive.  I for one want to thrive.

Food on Friday

We did pretty well working from the produce bin this last week.  I ran out of salad makings a couple days shy, though, and that was tough, since I wasn’t going to let myself go buy more.  Lets just say that when I got more yesterday in the new box I feasted on salad big time!  We still have some beats and chard left over from last week that we will try to work into meal plans this week.

One of the meals we had this past week turned out to be a delicious discovery.  I cooked up some lentils with just water and a myrtle leaf (similar to bay).  Then I chopped up the collards into smaller pieces, put them in my huge cast iron skillet with some olive oil and sauteed them just long enough to get them to wilt down a little, making room for a diced yam which got tossed in with them along with a little salt, a little more olive oil and some cayenne pepper.  That got put in the oven uncovered at 375 degrees F till the yam was mostly cooked through.  I stirred in the lentils and a couple cloves of pressed garlic and put the whole thing back in the oven till heated through.  We had this over rice and I was told this was something we should definitely make again.  There were also quite a bit of leftovers from this dish and at one point to add a little moisture back in while warming up in the oven, we put a bit of coconut oil on top to work in.  This made the dish sing!  So next time I make something like this I plan on using a mixture of olive and coconut oil.  It doesn’t look like much but it sure is delicious!

When I ran out of salad makings I had to get creative for my lunch, a lunch where I couldn’t have any grain.  That challenge led me to another tasty combination that I had never done before - Broccoli and Red Chard.  I sauteed some onion and celery in olive oil, then added some red pepper flake, broccoli, several red chard leaves and some garlic.  At the end I added a handful of hazelnuts to the mix and called it lunch.  Yum!

We made up another batch of the Corn Quinoa Chowder I wrote about recently, which was once again delicious, especially on the second day where the flavors got to blend.

So there are just some of the highlights of what we feasted on this past week using the produce from our New Roots Organics veggie bin.

Here’s what the bin this week looks like:

Celery
Green Cabbage
Carrots
Baby Bok Choy
Broccoli x2
Parsnips
Red Butter Lettuce x2
Arugula
Russet Potatoes
Garlic
Red Bell Peppers
2 Lemons
3 Minneola Tangelos
1 Navel Orange
4 Bananas

We doubled up on broccoli (Mark’s favorite veggie) and lettuce (one of my favorite veggies and in hopes of not running out of salad makings again!) this week.  We also had to supplement this box with some avocados from the store since they weren’t available this week through New Roots.

Last night we cooked up a batch of one of our favorite dishes, Roasted Parsnips and Cabbage, which you can read about here, and had lots and lots of salad with it.  The Parsnips were so sweet I felt like I was having cake or something!

I’m looking forward to another huge salad for lunch, but I still haven’t come up with what we’ll have for dinner yet… I’ll let you know in next weeks Food on Friday.

Bell Pepper with Funny Face

A Timely Recipe – Quinoa Corn Chowder

I had been thinking that a Quinoa and Corn chowder would taste pretty nice when soon there after Small Footsteps over at Reduce Footprints posted her monthly vegan recipe and it was none other that a Quinoa Corn Chowder!  Perfect timing!  Using the recipe she posted here as a starting point, I cooked up a batch of yummy creamy Quinoa Corn Chowder yesterday afternoon.

• Here is what I did different from the original recipe:
• Used red quinoa
• Added an extra 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin towards the end
• Added about an 1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne
• Used several small yellow potatoes to equal the one large red called for
• I made sure I used an unsweetened ORGANIC soy milk, I used Eden brand unsweetened which is nice and rich and creamy without a bunch of additives
• I completely forgot the lime wedges, but might try them for lunch today
• I let the chowder cook for closer to 20 minutes after adding the quinoa
• before adding the red bell pepper I pureed 3/4 of the soup in the blender, then added it back in with the rest of the soup and continued on with the recipe

This soup was spectacular!  I know I will be make it regularly.  Thanks Small Footprints!

Treasure

I was afraid I was going to have a Laura Ingalls  moment  as I was walking along the beach near my home.  A moment like the one where when she first saw the lake and all the pretty pebbles she filled her pocket so full of pretty pebbles that it eventually tore and her treasures went scattering everywhere.  Thankfully my raincoat pockets are a bit stronger.  Between the two of them I brought home 1pound 10 ounces of sea glass!  All of that was collected in only a few hundred feet of beach.  It was as if the beach birthed up an amazing collection of sea glass.  It was as if someone decided to scatter their amazing collection back onto the beach for others to have the joy of finding it all over again.  I don’t know what really brought that much beach glass, but I had a blast collecting it.  I left half again what I collected and that was just of what I saw, so there was probably plenty more than that left behind that I just didn’t see.  And it wasn’t just small pieces, either.  There were huge chunks, many great shapes, several with interesting writing on them  - one piece says “REFILL PROHIBITED” – and several beautiful and unusual colors, one was this unusual olive green color I don’t recall ever seeing before.  It was like a sea glass hunters heaven!  And my pockets survived!

Speaking of Sea Glass there is a book I checked out from the library before that is a great book for sea glass enthusiasts.  I don’t have my own copy, though I sure would love one – someday maybe.  If you like Sea Glass you should definitely check it out.

Happy Treasure Hunting!

A Sugar Scrub By Any Other Name

What do you get when you take, lavender, fair trade organic sugar, cold pressed apricot kernel oil, lavender essential oil and a little creative energy?  Why a Lovely Lavender Sugar Scrub, of course!

This project was inspired by my love for a particular Suki Product, that I haven’t been able to purchase for a while due to budget woes. It’s full of lemon lusciousness and I miss it!

I always called it a lemon sugar facial scrub.  So when Domestic Witch posted the recipe for the lavender sugar scrub I was excited to give it a try.  I didn’t realize the difference between the two until after I had made and used the scrub for the first time.  The Suki Product uses saponified oil and thus is a cleansing scrub where as the lavender sugar scrub is more of an exfoliating moisturizer.  Great for summer sandal feet and silky soft legs, but not for washing your face!

Now I’m wondering if I can get my hands on saponified oil.  In the mean time I have a nice squat pint jar of great smelling lavender sugar scrub sitting ready.  My feet will be so happy!  There was enough to make a couple small jars for family too… happy feet all around!

This project was inspired by a post over at Domestic Witch and made possible by a generous offering of lavender from my mother-in-law.  If you happen to be so lucky as to have a bit of lavender on hand (or a nice mother-in-law who has a bit of lavender) then I encourage you to visit the link above to find out how to make your own Lavender Sugar Scrub.

To Happy Feet and Learning!

Catching Up

I saw the above on one of my favorite blogs that always perks me up.  I felt like it about said it – except the cute shoes part.  Cute’s great, but Comfy is what’s really important!

I had a few moments today to take a look at some of the blogs I love reading and realized that I wasn’t the only one missing in action in the blog world or the only one thinking about blogging and wondering where to go from here.  That was a real comfort.  I’m hard on myself when I can’t or don’t get to everything.  So I’m hard on myself most of the time.  Now, I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t just me and something universal was going on and several people were being effected in similar ways.  I feel better now.

I’m so behind on sharing what has been going on that it can be really overwhelming to even start to try and figure out where to begin.  I realized yesterday I hadn’t been very communicative all around, not just on the blogs.  Guess I was in some introverted stage for a bit.  But I know that there are at least two people out there that would like to know what I’ve been up to.  So here ya go, Aunt Billy and Uncle Jim – your my best fans.

Weekend before last Mark was busy drying the dishes when my antique glass citrus juicer slipped from his hands and crashed into a million pieces on the kitchen floor.  So when a sunny day came the following week I walked on up the hill and did a little shopping.  The first order of business was to find another antique glass citrus juicer.  This went with our efforts to not bring new plastic into our house and to buy used whenever possible.  Not to mention it was a damn good excuse to go browse an antique store.  The ladies were super helpful at the antique store and I soon had three citrus juicers to chose from.  I went the smallest which was the mid-range in price and the cutest.  It has this little extra feature that really sold me on it – a primary ring with little slits that let the juice out but hold the seeds back.  It was also extra pointy and sharp so I was hoping it would be easier to use than my last one.  It is!  With out further ado – meet the new citrus juicer:

While I was up on the hill I stopped in at a consignment shop and was pleasantly surprised by what they had in there.  So often consignment shops are either focused towards teeny-boppers or old ladies.  I’m somewhere in between and I discovered that the shop was too.  There were several things to try on and I found a couple wonderful spring items.  Including this fun bright green dress.

 

And this beautiful cardigan.  Check out the detail!

 

And those are what I wore for our date on Sunday.

Mark surprised me with homemade whole wheat sticky buns for breakfast.  They were sticky gooey wonderful!

Then we caught the bus to downtown and went to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Calder exhibit which was fantastic.  This had to have been the best special exhibit in a while and the entry was the most spectacular I had ever seen with a huge Calder mobile sculpture turning in  the air.  I was so inspired by his creativity and use of random objects  and metal and color.  I walked away with lots of crazy art ideas in my head and I look forward to bringing them to life over time.  If you aren’t aware of Calder and his art you can check it out here.


After we left the museum we walked through a fairly quiet Pike Place Market where most everything was closed due to the holiday but Mark did manage to get me a single daffodil, which was really sweet.  Then we stopped at a small coffee shop that is also a local roaster and had a some excellent cups o’ bean juice.

It was time to catch the bus and head back to our little Alki neighborhood with a quick stop for pictures at the beach.

The cats were happy to have us home and sitting still for a little while.

We finished the evening with a light and delicious Japanese meal of Miso soup with tofu, shitake and green onion, brown rice, cucumbers and onions with rice vinegar and a surprise attempt at little cucumber and avocado sushi rolls by Mark.  Great day.  Great Guy.  Lucky Me!

Baby it’s Cold INSIDE

This is the first day since we turned off our furnace that the cloud cover has been thick enough to keep the sun from warming my upstairs studio to a more pleasant temperature.  The house is cold.  Usually it is several degrees warmer upstairs on the south side, but not today.  It’s in the fifties even in here.  I have a thick sweater on, a blanket over my lap and a cat on my legs and I’m still cold.  My nose is cold.

Even with all that being true, I have no intension of turning the heat back on.  For the last couple weeks we’ve been living with the house ranging from 55 to 62 knowing we will see our reward when the next energy bill comes.  This house had proved very expensive to heat and the winter was tighter than was comfortable.  We didn’t want our spring to be the same way.  So off went the heat.

There are other benefits too.  We’re using less energy and so the weight of our footprint will lighten a bit more.  That’s a good thing.  I want to enjoy the beauty of this earth for as long as I’m here and I want my nephews to have a beautiful place to live as well and their children after them.  I’m very willing to do my part.  The cats are willing to help too by being reliable lap warmers.

For two people that have been known to spend several days out on a mountain in the middle of winter for a snowshoe backpacking trip – living in a house without heat  really shouldn’t be a big deal.  I think the mentality changes when we come indoors.  What is tolerable and even enjoyable outside feels uncomfortable inside.  This has got to be some sort of psychological thing.   I try to remember that when it’s feeling particularly cold inside.  Maurie, I say to myself, Maurie you have chosen to go camping and hiking and even climbing in colder temperatures than this and you had fun doing it – stop your whining!

Or I’ll pack up the computer and go to the library where our tax dollars are already paying for the heat.

Antiques, Buying Used and Change the World Wednesday Challenge

This week Reduce Footprints has put out a challenge that I fully embrace.  Here’s what she wrote”

“This week consider antique stores for household purchases. If you’ve never been in an antique store, visit one to see what items they offer. If you need a couch, table, tools, dishes, etc., check out an antique store before buying new.”

This is something I love to do.  I love the challenge, the browsing and the hunt.  This sort of thing fits well with my eclectic taste as well.  My mom was also great at this and many of the items I have today she either found for me or I inherited from her.  Some came from my grandma and my Aunt, while others were special things I found on my own or with my husband.  One year we even did all our Christmas presents from antique or second hand stores.  One little item for each person wrapped in a scarf I had knit for them as well.  There was a broach for the MiL, cookie cutters for the SiL and so on, a hobby horse for a nephew.  It was so much fun, trying to find something that spoke of each person we were shopping for.  If I could I would do stuff like this far more often.  I thought that for this challenge I would share pictures of some of my treasures.  I hope you enjoy them and are inspired to find some of your own.

I’ll start with my most prized antique, an Art Deco Secretary that my husband gave me for a wedding anniversary.

It has become my special place for displaying favorite things and where I love to store all my favorite stationary.

Often there will be other second hand treasures sitting on top of it.  Like the blue pottery piece holding some Farmers Market flowers in the picture above.  And the cut glass bowl filled with shells and a tea light below.  The shells are mostly ones I collected from a beach shortly after my mom passed away and the bowl was one she gave me.

My mom gave many beautiful antique dishes and my grandma gave me a few as well.  My absolute favorite is in the fridge right now holding something so there won’t be a picture this time, but it’s a yellow Fiesta-ware like bowl that gets used all the time.  Here are a few of my other favorites, but definitely not all of them!

As a tea drinker and the daughter of a woman who loved teapots I have quite a collection.  Here are my two favorites.

One winter when we were living in Olympia Washington there was a power outage that motivated me to buy this hand coffee grinder for my husband, that way he wouldn’t have to look forlornly at the whole coffee beans in the cannister, ever again.  He took this to work where he made grinding his coffee by hand part of his French Press coffee break ritual.  Now it’s at home with us since he no longer has his own office.  I think he hopes it will be joined by a French Press for at home – preferably one from a second hand store or a locally owned business.

Antiques and second hand finds are used in the everyday life of our home.  I’m not one for just having them sit around collecting dust.  Here are a few examples of where second hand finds have become essential to our homes organization, especially in the kitchen.

Two crocks sit next to our stove holding various cooking utensils including an antique bright yellow butter melter and plenty of my favorite kitchen utensil – wooden spoons!  The pink glass dish holds fair trade organic sugar while the orange glass holds a collection of chopsticks.  Both glass pieces came from my grandmother.  The crocks were finds by my mother and me and are one of the things I always want to buy more of when I’m in an antique store.  Below you can see that the table these all sit on is serving as extra counter space next to the stove and is an antique itself.

Another antique find from Olympia was the spice rack below along with several of the spice jars  It was originally brown.  I sanded it and painted it the pale yellow it is today.  I also sanded a break in one of the drawer fronts to give it a curve instead of leaving it looking ragged.

One of my all time favorite things to look through at Antique store are the linens.  I’m constantly dreaming up ideas for vintage fabrics, from using them for what they were intended to letting my creativity loose and letting them become something new.  Here are just a few things in my collection.

I hope all this will inspire you to find the potential for antique and second hand stores in your life.  I haven’t mentioned half the things that are second hand and antique in my life, but I was writing a blog post not a novel!   I’ll leave you now with a picture of my favorite candle holder, a metal filigree thing that always has a beeswax candle in it waiting to provide a nice candle light ambiance.